Conventionally, there is known an inverted pendulum type vehicle, in which a base body assembled with a traveling motion unit which travels on a floor surface and an actuator unit which drives the traveling motion unit, is also assembled with a payload supporting part of an occupant which is capable of freely tilting with respect to the perpendicular direction. The inverted pendulum type vehicle is a vehicle with a necessity to move the traveling motion unit in a manner to move a fulcrum of the inverted pendulum, so as to maintain a tilt angle of the payload supporting part to a desired tilt angle (so as to prevent the payload supporting part from fall due to tilting).
As a control technology of this type of the inverted pendulum type vehicle, for example, the one found in Patent Document 1 had been proposed by the present applicant.
In the Patent Document 1, there is disclosed a control technology of an inverted pendulum type vehicle in which a base body of a vehicle assembled with a payload supporting part of an occupant is provided so as to be freely tiltable about two axes, specifically about one axis in a longitudinal direction and about the other axis in a lateral direction, with respect to the ball-shaped traveling motion unit. In this technology, a driving torque of a motor is sequentially determined so as to make a difference between a measured value of a tilt angle of the base body (=tilt angle of the payload supporting part) and a desired tilt angle closer to 0, and also to make the difference between a measured value of a velocity of the motor as an actuator unit (and consequently a moving velocity of the traveling motion unit) and a desired velocity closer to 0. Thereafter, the traveling motion of the traveling motion unit is controlled via the motor, in accordance with the determined drive torque.
The present applicant further proposes vehicles capable of functioning as the inverted pendulum type vehicle, such as those found in Patent Document 2 and 3.